Rock slide on I-40

Last weekend I attended my high school reunion in Gaffney, SC. Normally my route back to Cincinnati involves I-40 from Asheville, NC to Knoxville, TN. But when I hit Asheville Sunday morning, traffic was being routed up I-26 (a beautiful almost-new road) to Johnson City, TN and down I-81 from there.

This is the second time since we’ve been in Ohio that a slide has closed I-40. It’s a remarkable road through Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina and Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee. I had missed being caught in the slide by about 9 hours.

One of my good friends at the reunion wrote this after I sent him an email about the slide: “I remember I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge very fondly. I used to drive that route coming down from Lexington in my Fiat. Top down…wind in my hair….pedal to the metal…and bright sun in my eyes. One time I sailed into one of the tunnels at about 80 mph and was confronted by total darkness. The lights in the tunnel were OFF that day, and I had temporary blindness from the sun, and my sunglasses were on, AND my headlights were off. How did we ever survive our youths?”